Addictions and Obsessions

Addictions and Obsessions – Ajahn Brahm Transcription (Robot generated transcription – expect errors!) Okay, just again, I've been traveling around, so I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be talking about this evening, but somebody mentioned a subject I haven't really talked about for a long time. And that's actually how in Buddhism, we deal with addictions and obsessions and what are the skillful means of overcoming those addictions and obsessions so we can feel a sense of freedom from these things. Because certainly that Buddhism is incredibly strong on its psychology in a way of making use of our mind, working with it to training it, to free it from all some of those obsessions addictions ways of dealing with the world which don't really cause much happiness for ourselves and others. Obsessions and addictions are one of those parts of the mind which can cause enormous problems and difficulties for people. What are the skillful means of overcoming those addictions and obsessions? It's not just addictions and obsessions addictions to drink or obsessions with smoking. It's also some of the other obsessions we have, some of the ways we speak to the people we love, some of the ways we act in our family or in our workplace, even in some of the ways we think with our mind. These are all sometimes addictive, obsessive behavior, physical behavior, verbal behavior, or mental behavior which can cause us so much suffering and cause so much pain to others. So it's worthwhile finding out about these things and knowing how to deal with them. So become a person who is internally at peace, happy with oneself, someone who doesn't have many problems inside, nor someone who creates problems for others. We become like a person who's kind to themselves and kind to others. So this is actually the end when we give up. Find a way to release our cells from addiction and addictions and obsessions. The reason why Buddhism is strong in this area is because it understands the cause and effect relationship of our mind. Now, how the mind actually works as a process and how it gets into these ruts, these dead end streets of obsessions and addictions. A dead end street is a very good simile because you get into these dead end streets and you can't get out of them afterwards, you get stuck. You don't know how to sort of remove yourself from this situation. But one of the great things which we have with understanding these things is understanding actually where they came from and how we get out of them. One of the great practices which we have in Buddhism, it's part of meditation, but it's part of ordinary life as well is the understanding, the practice of mindfulness. It and again, this mindfulness is this awareness of the inner workings of the mind. It's as if we put a spotlight into our mind, into our thinking process, into our emotional process, into the way we react to situations in life. We put a spotlight onto all of that inside of ourselves to understand how it all works and why it all works and. It and just actually putting that spotlight of mindfulness inside and seeing what's happening and how it works. That by itself is a huge help to overcoming addictions and obsessions. You see how it all works. There's a whole process, there a whole route of thinking and emotional responses which we keep getting sucked into again and again and again and again. The same old habits, the same old processes, the same old ways of reacting to some of the difficulties in life. Whether we react to those difficulties by taking a bottle and getting drunk, whether we take to those respond to those problems in life with drugs or with other obsessive behavior like our bad speech or being hurtful and harmful to the people we love, or even being hurtful and harmful to ourselves, we see the whole process happening. Once you see this whole process happening. Then it's not that hard to change the process. Our conditioned behavior of our mind, the way that thinking and emotions run, they run on well worn courses. The same routes we've taken before, the same piles, the same condition and responses. We become brainwashed into following. We become creatures of habit. And that's what obsessions and addictions are. Habits of mind, habits of speech, habits of actions which we see are not going to be conducive to happiness once we see them as habits. We find the way to overcoming habits is always through this marvelous practice of mindfulness. It's as if, and this is the simile which I've used many times it's as if you're in a room I know you can only see one door to move from that room to somewhere else. And you always take that same door, that same route and it always leads to the same place. And it's not a very nice place you go to with some of these addictions and obsessions with mindfulness. You see, there's a second door, another alternative, even a third door, fourth door, many doors. Mindfulness gives you more choice, more opportunities, different ways of dealing with the same thing. Mindfulness expands your options, gives you different ways of dealing with the same problem. You can see that in just little practices which you can do in daily life. As I keep telling people when they come in here, good exercises in mindfulness are doing things in a different way every time when you come into this hall. People who come into this hall regularly sit in a different place, not in the same chair every week, become creatures of habit. Don't even come through the same door into this hall. There are three doors into this hall. Now, please don't look at me as being a hypocrite because I've got no choice. I have to sit in this chair and I have to come through that door. Although this evening I was thinking of not coming in it because it was locked. Thinking, going back to Singapore. But I've got no choice. But sometimes I like doing things differently, coming through different doors just for the heck of it. I did that, I think, a few weeks ago. I remember, just instead of coming through this door, coming through that door over there, and people really surprised, what's that jump bomb doing coming from that door over there? What it does, actually, when you do things differently, it wakes you up, it gives you more energy, it gives you more life. If you become a creature of habit, you die slowly. Your mindfulness goes. Those people who get into routines, eventually their mind dies. It's called Alzheimer's disease. That's one of the reasons, I reckon, why people lose their mind. Because they just keep doing things the same old way, watching the same old movies on the TV, the same old self helpers, going to the same Buddhist society every Friday night, live on the wild side. Do things differently. I teach in meditation retreats. It's great talking about sort of mindfulness. You start doing things a slightly different way and you understand. These are just examples. Well, sometimes I just didn't actually get onto the breath meditation because I run out of time. I started a bit late. I'm sorry about that. But when we do breath meditation, one of the techniques which I found very effective on getting people interested in the breath is actually breathing backwards. You know how to breathe backwards? Breathing backwards means you breathe out first, then you breathe in. Most people breathe in first, then they breathe out. When you do breath meditation, breathe in, breathe out. When you say, Take three breaths, what breath do you start with? The in breath, don't you? So you try it the other way around. Speed out first, then breathe in. You just try it. And it should logically, it should be exactly the same, but it's not. It's different. You're doing things slightly differently. And that makes it far more alive, far more sort of new, fresh, and you have to be more alert with it. Or like in the morning when you first get up and. When you brush your teeth, which side of the mouth do you start from? Whether the top or the bottom? I challenge you this evening when you brush your teeth or tomorrow morning, whenever it is your next brush your teeth. Notice where you start your brushing your teeth. Next time start from a different place. Put a bit of variety into your brushwork. It if you start on the top left hand side, then start on the top right hand side. The bottom start in the middle. Do things differently. Then you find actually even brushing your teeth in the morning, simple thing like that becomes more exciting. You have to put more effort and energy. You're more alert. You're more aware of what's happening. What you're doing is little exercises to increase your awareness of what's going on in life. Doing things differently. You all know sort of if you always are creatures of habit, especially in your relationships, always do the same thing, completely predictable. Then you find your relationship dies. There's nothing interesting in there anymore and your relationships to yourself will die. And. It because there's no life left. Just creatures of habit. The same old routines. Just like a robot. Not like a person anymore. Same old time. You know, people say the same old things all the time, you know, good morning. Have a good day. Somebody told me just when I was in I'd forget where the where I've been the last few days. Sometimes I wake up in the morning. I have to check where I am when I wake up. They're saying that I think it was Peter Usenoff or something. He was in the United States. And people say, have a good day. His response was, I've got other plans. A great response. So have other plans. In other words, be mindful, be alive. And this is actually the way we develop this wonderful way of looking inside of ourselves at our mind, at our heart, at our life, which gives us more options. We find we discover that where we always thought there's only one way to breathe in breath first and outbreath. Now we found there's another way outbreath. First and in breath. When we first thought there's only one way to brush our teeth, there's hundreds of ways to brush our teeth. We thought there's only one place to sit. There's hundred hundreds of places to sit. When we thought there's only one response. When our husband says this and really gives us a hard time, we find there's many responses and. We find that people can't push our buttons anymore because we've got more buttons than they ever know about. We've got secret buttons. Then they can't press those. We respond in innovative ways suitable for the occasion. If we become a creature of habit, we're predictable. Other people can control us. Exactly how to make you unhappy. That's why when somebody starts trying to upset you, when they try and make you angry, when they call you a slob and you say, yeah, actually, that's quite right. I am a slob. That really sort of upsets them because you're agreeing with you. I didn't expect that. When they call you fat, you say, yeah, I'm fat. And they're trying to upset you, but they can't do it when somebody's trying to upset you and makes you unhappy. If you really want to get your own back, agree with them because that really upsets them when they don't play the game of button pushing. What we're saying here is there's other responses. Other responses rather than the ordinary ones of getting upset and allowing yourself to be controlled. Obsessions are like that. You allow yourself to be controlled by your habits. You. When you stop those obsessions and addictions, you find this incredible amount of freedom. You find you don't have to always respond in the same way to the same stimuli. You can be free to respond in other ways, innovative ways, different ways. And this is how one starts to stop those addictions. If it's, say, alcohol or cigarettes or bad speech, one sees the whole process happening. One recognizes it because one has been mindful. One has been observed inside what's actually happening. And after observing it, one see the whole process going, especially at the beginning of the process when it starts, it's very easy to stop. The forks in the road are at the beginning. But once you get onto the freeway, it's a long way until there's the next exit. If you get into the freeway of anger, the freeway of addictions, once you're on there, you get in the stream of traffic, and it may be many, many kilometers before you can get off that particular habit. But at the beginning, that's where you have the most power. It's like a train. Once the train leaves the station, it's having a lot of momentum. You try and put on the brakes, it's so hard to stop. Just got this huge amount of weight going so fast, this huge momentum. Or it's like the tree. When it's a small sapling, it's very easy to put out of the ground. But if you leave the sapling there for too long, it's a huge tree and it's very difficult to take out. Habits are like that. If you can catch them early, it's very easy. There was a mong friend who, because of an injury in the Vietnam War, would have epileptic fits us. And the way he overcame that whole process of epileptic fits was actually to use mindfulness to know the whole process which would lead into having a fit. He would watch it because he watched it and observed it and understood the whole process. When he saw the process starting, he could take evasive action. And that's why he never had those fits anymore. He could see what's going to happen if he continued on this route. This is what would happen next. So he took other paths. He went through other doors and he got over this. So if it's an addiction to alcohol or addiction to drugs or addiction to cigarettes or addiction to sort of harmful behavior, we see what's going to happen. We've been down that road before. That's what Mindfulness tells us. And Mindfulness sees it happening and we stop. We also have to understand the danger it gives to us. Not so hard to see some of the addictive behaviors. We know it hurts, we know it harms. We know it creates problems in our life. Please recognize that and remind yourself of it. And then you can use what I call especially use this in my meditation retreats, The Simile of the Snake. The Simile of the Snake came about from my experiences as a young monk in northeast Thailand, in the jungles of Northeast Done. I went back there recently, just a few days ago. But those jungles have changed a lot. In particular, where there was once many, many snakes, there's only a few left now. And. So I tell the monks, you've got it too easy these days. In the good old days, there are all these snakes around. I remember telling the story a few weeks ago, a week or two ago, and I've even peed on a snake. It's a very dangerous thing to do. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. I'm meditating all night and getting up in the morning used to go to urinate in the bushes. And that one morning it was at dawn and the light wasn't all that clear anyway, and I was a bit sleepy. And there's a stick, a branch of a tree in front which I urinated on. And then the branch started to wiggle and I realized it was the branch after all. It was a snake. I moved away very quickly. Part of my anatomy was exposed. But fortunately, sort of I apologized to the snake very quickly. So the snake sort of stood away and sort of didn't take its revenge. There's so many snakes in those days, but in particular, these monasteries were very, very poor in those early days. And I remember clearly. We used to have all these meetings in the morning and the evening. And after the evening meeting, you had to walk through the jungle on these very narrow paths, from the hall to your hut where you slept. Maybe it was in quite a few hundred meters. Sometimes from the hall to your hut, sometimes 100, 200 meters. And obviously you try to use flashlights, but it was so poor that many times we had the flashlights, but no batteries. I remember actually going to see my teacher at Jen, Chard, ran out of flashlight batteries. Can I have some batteries? She said, I'm sorry, you can't. We've got none. There's none here. So I had to walk back from the hall to the place where I was sleeping without a flashlight. And in those jungles, even the starlight, there's too many trees, so you can't actually get any light coming into the jungle. It's really, really dark. And you knew there were snakes? About hundreds of them, as I was first told when I went to Thailand. They told me there are hundred species of snake in Thailand. 99 are venomous, and the other one strangles you to death. In other words, they're all dangerous. Thank you very much. Thank. So I had to walk back knowing there were snakes around and knowing those snakes were very dangerous. And the nearest hospital was a long way away. There was no phone. If you got bitten, you were in big trouble. So I used the simulator of the snake because I knew they were a danger, because I knew there were many of them around and they were lying on the path. It meant that I was always on the lookout for them. I wasn't sort of mindless there was a danger there. I had to get from the hall to my hut. I was looking out for them. My mindfulness was very strong and they were focused on the danger which lay on the path because I knew there was a danger and I was focused on that danger and I was alert, awake mindful of it. I never got bitten. Sometimes you see a snake there, you either jump off over it or you sort of go around it, if you could, or you take another pass and. Because I was on the lookout and I knew it was a danger, I always managed to avoid it. It's called massimile the snake. If an obsession and addiction is a danger to you, where it's alcohol or anger or depression or whatever, if you identify that as a danger and you know it's on the path in front of you in your life, it know it's a danger and be on the lookout for it. If you're on the lookout for it, you're aware it's out there and you're mindful, you're careful, you're alert. You find you can always step over these things. You can go another path. You can jump over them and they never catch you. Say, if it's alcohol, you can see it coming. You know alcohol. If you take that one glass, you have to take the second and the third and the fourth. And some person said that if you just take one glass of alcohol, that's okay. It doesn't really matter, does it? That's what people ask me over here. One glass of alcohol is okay, isn't it? Can. Somebody compared it to, like, a fire. Big fires or small fires, they all burn. So even if you hold a match to your finger, it still burns and hurts. Even a small glass of alcohol takes away your mindfulness, your alertness. You're not as sharp as you were before. Because you're not as sharp as you were before. You can take that second glass of alcohol as the all saying goal goes. Sort of alcohol makes you crazy. Alcohol can make you angry. Alcohol can make you actually shout at your wife. Alcohol can make you crazy at your wife. Alcohol can make you want to shoot your wife and alcohol makes you miss. That's an old Australian joke. The dangers of alcohol makes you miss. We're actually saying that's not a good Buddhist story, I must admit, but it lightens up the evening. But these are danger to see as a danger. If you see as a danger, you can actually see it happening. You're on the lookout for, look, this is a danger to me. I want to overcome this. If I see the craving coming up, I'm moving towards this. I'm going to take evasive action quickly. And mindfulness gives you the other opportunities. Same like anger. No, it's terrible. It's rotten to you know, when you're angry at your loved ones, you got to live with them. You're stuck with them. If you get angry at your mum or your dad or angry at your children, angry at your husband and wife, we all feel terrible, terrible about it after. So why did I do that? Why do I have to keep on relating to my loved ones like this? Why can't I be at peace with the people in my house? And you realize that that creates so much suffering in your life. And so you start seeing when anger is about to come up or these bad ways of speaking start to arise. You see the whole process coming, and something comes out. Say this is a snake. This is a danger. I don't want to be like this. I don't want my family to be like this. If I'm bickering with my husband, bickering with my wife, what are my kids going to do? They're just going to see that as a normal way of living life, and they're going to bicker and moan about their partners when they get married. And we just have this terrible, terrible way of living our lives. We don't bicker at our monastery and start talking rotten things about each other and putting each other down at my monastery. And we speak we speak kind words, and we train ourselves to speak kind words. We train ourselves with this snake simile, if that is your nature. And you start you see this coming up? You recognize it. It's a snake. You make sure you never step on that. You jump over it. Take evade of action. Do another thing. Do another way. So one of the ways of escaping from addictive behavior is remove yourself. Go away from the bottle, go away from the cigarettes, don't have them in your room. Move yourself away from the irritation instead of shouting at your wife, just go to your room. Even better, come to the Buddhist centre, come to the temple. Especially one thing which I always remember this man came to our monastery in Thailand many years ago when I was there, he just came up to me and asked, can I stay at the monastery for a few days? We had lots of accommodation at our monastery in Thailand those days. Yeah, sure, you can come. Have you come to learn some Buddhism? He said no. Have you come to learn some meditation? He said no. What have you come here for? He said, Because I've had an argument with my wife. What a wonderful thing to do. Instead of sort of going down the pub, instead of going out with his mates, instead of going out to kill himself or something, he came to the monastery, said, okay, you can come and stay for a few days. It was no problem at all but after three or four days he came up to me and said, Can I go back home now? He wanted to take leave, said, Why do you want to go? He said, because I miss my wife and I sort of feel cool now. I feel calm. I want to make up what a very skillful way of doing things when people actually you're angry and upset, instead of actually taking out on other people actually go to a calm place, remove themselves from the trigger of their ill will to a calm place, to a peaceful place to cool down, to take evasive action and. So if you got friends who get you into bad trouble, if you are in with a bad lot, and this is not a bad lot here, when you come to the temple, don't think if people say you come to a bad lot, this is a good lot in this temple. So you come to a good place, it gives you good energy, you feel good about yourselves and you're removing yourself from the problem. That's one of the things to do, remove yourself from those things which trigger your addiction, your obsessions, and there's bad ways of doing things. And then once you've removed yourself, you find it's a great way of overcoming those things. Once you've removed yourself from the problem, then actually you can contemplate it much better. There's an old saying in Chinese culture, say to love the tiger but at a distance. It to love the tiger but at a distance. So it means what that means is you can't go loving a tiger by patting them on the head or ticking them under the chin. They're going to bite your hand off. What you can do is when you're away from the danger, then you can contemplate it, then you can love it. You can change your attitude towards it. People sometimes very difficult when there's somebody who's always again pushing our buttons, making us angry and making us upset, giving us a difficult time. It's so hard, actually, to understand what's going on. When you're too close to it, removing yourself from the problem gives you more options. You can see things in a different way. You can love the tiger at a distance. When they're close to them, all you have is fear. You have these obsessive of reactions. In Buddhism, I usually use the simile of the hand to understand this. A hand our problem, our addiction. The stimulus which creates these negative responses is like a hand which we're holding too close to ourselves. Like my hand. Now you can all see it's so close to me. I can't see any of you. I can't see any light, any goodness. All I can see is my hand. The reason is it's too close to my eyes. Just for the tape here, I'm just actually holding it right above my nose, covering my eyes. I can't see anybody. It's not the hand's problem. This problem is it's in the wrong place. I should put it out to where it should be at the end of my arm. Then I can see my hand, but can also see all of you as well. I've got mindfulness a bigger picture. So often with obsessions we have a stimulus. Say somebody, maybe your wife has left you or maybe your father has died or your child's got into big trouble. And that's all one sees in one's life, just this big problem. And we react in an inappropriate way. It's like somebody who's died. We act in grief as if it's the only person who counts in this world. They've died. The only people who die is the one you love. You can't see the bigger picture. You can't see anything else in life except this huge problem which you're holding right in front of you with a grief. You take that problem, you put it out here. Yeah, they died. But what else is going on in the world? What else happens in life? Who else have you got who love you, who you care for, who care for you as well, your other responsibilities. You put the problem where it belongs. You remove yourself from the problem. It's loving the tiger out of the distance, seeing the hand, but at the end of the arm rather than holding it right in front of you. So you lost your job, but. So you've got cancer. If you hold the cancer right up to your hand, it's the biggest thing in the whole world. You can't see anything else and you're in big trouble. You put it out here, you got cancer, but it's only in part of your body. The rest of your body is healthy. It's only part of the life. It won't last forever as other people do this and get cancer and they get better again afterwards. Some die. If you die again, so what? You get reborn again. You get another body next time. Maybe a better one next time. Who knows? Maybe this old one is getting old now anyway. Getting ugly when you get old. Maybe it's time for a change of model. Hold it out in the hand over here. What is death? It's only a part of life. It's no big thing when you get disappointed because things go wrong. So there's other things have gone right in your life. Somebody dies, somebody gets born. It's happening all the time. So when you put it out here, you get distance from the problem. When you get distance from the problem, you find you can react in all sorts of different ways. You're not always reacting in the same way. You've got mindfulness, you've got more options because you're seeing the bigger picture of things and. So that's why that person if they stayed with their wife when this man who went to our monastery years ago if they stayed with their wife all the time they'd be just too close to the problem and they'd be reacting the same way again and again and again. So they just put themselves a little distance apart just for a few minutes, a few hours or whatever and see the big picture. When they see the big picture, they've got more ways of responding rather always responding in the obsessive, reactive ways which we call addictions. Remove yourself gives you more wisdom and gives you more ways of dealing with things. Also, when I say love the tiger at a distance it's also this idea of love and kindness is also crucial to overcoming addictions. A lot of addictions and obsessions are like a self hurt you alcohol. We know it's hurting us. We keep on doing it. Why now? We say these terrible things to each other. We know it hurts us to say these things. We keep on doing it. We push ourselves, we deny ourselves happiness and freedom and peace. Why we have the pain of losing a loved one. Why is it we sort of keep that grief here? It's very clear to me as a Buddhist, as a meditator, to know that so many people are afraid of happiness. They just don't want to be happy. They don't want to be free of the problem. They don't want to be free of the addiction. Why? It's because they don't love themselves. They don't really care enough about themselves. Something they did in the past, some guilt, some mistake they keep right there in their hearts. I don't deserve to be happy for what I've done. It basically is the cause of those addictions. Most addictions, most harmful and hurtful behavior start from this deep seated guilt inside of themselves. Ah. The idea that I need to be punished, that I don't deserve happiness, I don't deserve to be free. Which is why lovingkindness becomes the next method of overcoming addictions. To start with that, we have to not feel guilty, not feel upset, not to have this terrible feeling of having to punish oneself because of the addictions. I'm an alcoholic, therefore I'm bad, therefore I don't feel good about myself, therefore I have to take more alcohol. I don't feel happy myself because of something I've done. I feel upset, therefore I have to make other people unhappy, to anger and ill will, which makes me feel even more unhappy. We keep these cycles of unhappiness. I am unhappy, therefore I feel guilty, therefore I want to punish myself, therefore I want to be more unhappy. These cycles of self hurt, they keep on saying in the Western world that lack of self esteem, lack of like, inner happiness is one of the biggest mental problems of human beings. I don't have a lack of self esteem. I'm quite at peace with myself. I don't think of myself as a great person, as a medium person, as a small person. This is when Buddhism we call conceit. There's three conceits in Buddhism. I am better than other people, I am the same as other people, and I am worse than other people. It's interesting that third part is also a conceit I am worse than others. In Buddhism, we don't even measure ourselves against others. We've stopped that measuring, comparing ourselves to others. So being better or being worse or being the same just as doesn't even come up. This actually frees ourselves from judging ourselves against others, which again, is the root of guilt. Other people are okay, but not me. So when actually we overcome this sense of guilt, we overcome it with a sense of like lovingkindness, which is a great way of overcoming addictions. You find if you're giving a bit of kindness, you're giving a bit of love, and you give that bit of kindness and love to yourself, you find that addictions and obsessions are very easy to overcome. Which is why the meaning of love, as you've all heard me say many times, is to say to yourself the door of my heart is open to me no matter what I'm doing, no matter who I am. And even if I'm a drug addict, even I'm an alcoholic, even though I'm sort of do all these terrible things. Still the door of my heart's open to me. I can be at peace with myself. I can love myself even though I'm doing these things. When you do this, you're actually undermining the cause of self hurt and self harm. You're starting the rehabilitation process. You're facilitating yourself, allowing yourself to be accepting yourself for who you are, being at peace with yourself. This type of Buddhist love we call meta lovingkindness is so important that we keep repeating it again and again in so many different disguises. Lovingkindness the door of my heart is always open to you is called also letting go. You're letting things be as they are rather than trying to change them. It's called contentment. In particular, it's called love. You're making peace with yourself when you make peace with yourself, with all of your faults if you try and make yourself perfect before you love yourself I'm going to give up my addictions, give up all my old bad habits, give up all the bad speech, give up all the terrible things then I can love myself. You'll find you'll never make it. You try and be perfect before you're at peace. US you will die before you're at peace. What we have the way of peace is learning how to be at peace in the middle of imperfection. To be able to love someone even though they're not perfect. To be able to love someone even though they're far from perfect to even to love someone even they may be even bad. Because that love is what heals the badness and stops it. There's many, many stories in the world when someone has received some kindness, some affection, some love, some acceptance on all their destructive behavior towards themselves and others stops it. It stops right there. There are many stories of people who have done some terrible crimes, and someone has come along and accepted them as a human being for who they are. And they've taken that person as a brother, as a father, as a mother, and would never do anything to harm anyone ever again. That's the power of kindness and love. And that power of kindness, of love is actually how we overcome those addictions. Instead of hating ourselves for our addictions, for our obsessions, for our bad behavior, we get to this amazing leap of courage, this leap of faith, doing things in a completely different way. Finding a door where there shouldn't be. A door and saying, in spite of all my alcoholism, in spite of all my addictions, in spite of all of this, the door of my heart is open to me. When you become at peace with yourself, when that love goes to yourself, when that forgiveness goes to yourself, when there's no reason to harm and punish yourself anymore. You find it so easy to give up those addictions. The reason for self harm is taken away. The reason for punishment has been overcome. The path to freedom is open to you. Addictions and obsessions. Hurtful behavior is like being in a prison. You know you can open that door at any time. No one else puts you in a prison. Only yourself. No one else punishes you. Only yourself. Because you know that you are the owner of your karma. As they say in Buddhism, you're punishing yourself. You're imprisoning yourself, no one else. It means you can also free yourself. Let yourself go. Let it be. Be at peace. To love the tiger. Even though the tiger can be very wild, you can tame the tiger through kindness. That tiger inside of you, the heart, the hurt, the critical mind, the fault finding mind, you can tame that. When it's tamed through lovingkindness the door my heart's open you find that those addictions are so easy to let go of because the root cause of them, the self hurt and wanted to hurt other people, is gone. You can give up and give up the alcohol, give up the drugs, give up the hurtful behavior. It's easy to do. People are only angry at others because they don't love themselves, not at peace with themselves. I've seen this so often in the great monks and nuns I've known. They just can't get angry at other people, no matter what other people do or say about them. Why? It's because they're at peace with themselves. If you love yourself, you're at peace with yourself. You accept yourself love, you find you can be so accepting of other people, so at peace, destructive behavior disappears. So those of you who have addictions and obsessions, check that one out. Whether you're not running on ill will, on negativity and. It. When that's overcome, you give yourself love and kindness saying to yourself again and again and again until you understand what the meaning of those words are. The door of my heart's open to me. No matter who I am, no matter what I've done, my love still goes unconditionally to myself. Then you know if you can know how to love yourself, you know how to love others. And your hurtful and harmful behavior stops right there. And the wonderful thing is that when you start one stopping, one hurtful, obsessive behavior, you find you start to feel this immense power and freedom. I remember the time when I gave up alcohol as a student. After giving up that alcohol, I felt this surge of energy for about a whole week. I was getting in charge of my life. I realized I could do these things if I saw something was not really helpful for me. I could actually let it go and stop it. You have this immense feeling of power over your life, over your destiny, especially your power over your happiness. When you start to give up obsessive behavior give up some of the addictions, it you find it can be done. You start one little thing. You give up one addiction, one obsession, one subnegative means of behavior and. And then you know how to give up all the negative behavior and you feel surges of power. Those are powers of freedom. You look upon these negative behavior, it's just, again, like these controllers inside of your mind, these tyrants which make you do things which hurt you, which make you do things which hurt other people. Why do you need to take drugs? Why do you need to sort of take alcohol? Why do you need it costs a lot of money, alcohol very expensive. Be much better to take a cup of tea and give the difference into the donation box. I know it's not good for the economy, but it's good for the Buddhist society's economy. So why do we do these things? And we realize we don't have to do these things when we don't do these things. Life is so much freer when you don't have to have alcohol. You don't have to have drugs when you don't have to watch these stupid soap operas. Sometimes people don't come on a Friday night because there's an important soap opera on a Friday night or Tuesday evening in Armadillo. They can't come because All Saints is on. You get all these addictions which people have all these things that stop them really enjoying themselves. They're not free anymore. They can't go anywhere because they have to be in for this and they have to be for that, and they have to be for something else. And this is crazy. The addictions people have you're not free. So when you overcome addictions one by one, you feel this great surge of freedom and power. Yeah, you can watch it if you want to, but you don't have to. You can watch the footy if you want to, but you don't have to. Something else is more important. You can stop. You can criticize someone else if you want to, but you don't have to. You're not a creature of habit anymore. You're not predictable. You got no buttons, which you push this one and you got the response that makes you an amazingly free person. People can call you a pig. Instead of getting angry, just go Oink, oink. Make a joke about it. You do all sorts of silly things and makes it like people can't make you angry. And you won't get angry. You won't allow anger in your house. You're free of it. You don't have to take alcohol. You can go into the pub and just have an orange juice with your friends. You're much more in control. You can live your life free from those things, you know, which hurt. Because mindfulness gives you more opportunities. Love, loving, kindness frees you of guilt, stimulus, the snake. You realize what the problem is. You make it sure it's in your mind so you can overcome it and free yourself from it. Three very simple methods. Ryan also said removing yourself from the problem, from the trigger. Simple methods to overcome addict addictions. Eventually you overcome all those addictions in your mind. Not just the gross ones of like, drugs and alcohol, really self destructive behavior, but also the other ones of like fault finding and ill will. Isn't it strange that these people we love, we always tend to whenever we speak to them, it's always pointing out faults. Isn't that what happens to you when people talk to you? How often is it walk finding, you didn't do this, you didn't do that? How often is it praised? Oh, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for being such a wonderful wife. Thank you for being such a great husband. Those of you have married last week. How many times has your husband actually praised you and said what wonderful wife you are? How many times has your wife said, no, I really appreciate you as a husband. It. And how many times have been fault fighting and critical? You understand what I mean? Those are negative behaviors which don't create any love and happiness in the world. So please, change those addictions and obsessive behaviors. You feel more freedom and happiness and change that towards yourself. So you praise yourself. You have gratitude to all the effort you've put into your lives, all the goodness which you've done that makes you free, it makes you happy, gives you energy. Energy to do good in the world. Addictions and obsessions, like put you in prison, harming yourself, and you're unable to really give service to the world. Be yourself in those addictions and sufferings. And then you can do what life is really all about serving the community, increasing the gross national happiness of our community. I read that about the King of Bhutan. He's got this program because it's a poor country, they don't want it. It was the last country in the world which had televisions. Bhutan only in 2000 they started to have a television service in the country. The Princess of Bhutan, she's a Buddhist and I've seen her a few times. She was telling me this. And the king, her brother has got this new program. Now instead of the Gross National product which is what western countries find is important, the Buddhist king of Bhutan has got this program the Gross National Happiness. He wants to increase the gross national happiness of his country. This is the main thing of his country. That's why the government is working. That's why are working for the happiness economy of the people. Really good on him. It's a wonderful thing to do. Wonderful way of it's. Only a small country, insignificant in the world. So he can get away with it without having the IMF on his back. This is actually what life is all about. Increasing the Gross National happiness in your family. Increasing the Gross National happiness of yourself and your friends, of our community, of our land, of our planet. That's why we give up obsessions and addictions. So we can really do what life is all about. The purpose and meaning of life. To increase the GNH, the Gross national happiness of our world. So there's a little ways of overcoming obsessions and addictions in your life and the reason why we do these things. And also pointing out what life is all about. So there you are. It's really easy to do. No problem at all. So just do it. Okay? So on that note just do it. Mention this talk this evening is sponsored once again by Nike. Just do it. Just do it. It's also that when you're free, it's just so wonderful. It's also sponsored by Toyota. Oh, what a feeling. Those are the only two I know, I think. So this is okay. You go sideu now. Yeah. Okay. Go on. Ends the talk.